


Aim High

by tmelange



Series: Between an Arrow and a Target [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 21:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmelange/pseuds/tmelange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark saves Oliver from a vengeful classmate intent upon killing him, piquing Oliver's interest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aim High

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet is episode-related. All events take place after episode 605 and assume everything before and nothing after. You probably wouldn't understand this ficlet if you haven't seen the episode; it doesn't really stand on its own.
> 
> Part of the series _Between and Arrow and a Target._ The stories in this series are related but not necessarily sequential, meaning each story incorporates prior stories, but there may be things missing, or subsequent stories may skip forward in time. I may also go backwards and add stories that fit in between two stories that have been previously published, or add pieces to the front end. So, this is more or less a "universe" rather than a series, per se.
> 
> Also, some of the stories are episode-related and others go off on a tangent.

Clark said it would hurt.

When Martha Kent's amazing son carefully snapped the shaft by the fletching and lifted him like a six foot three feather pillow, hands to waist, so the arrow pinning him to the wall could slide out of his shoulder—Clark warned him in his quiet voice about the pain. He said nothing about the shame of youthful mistakes coming home to roost.

Actually, the pain was nothing. Years of training, of honing his body, practicing— Oliver Queen was used to physical pain. It was the fact that Clark seemed to think even less of him as he explained the circumstances surrounding this most recent attack that fueled Ollie's embarrassment.

"I owe you one," Ollie said, as Clark propped him against the desk.

"Another one," Clark agreed. His blue eyes were hard, judgmental. "Do you have gauze, tape?"

"Bathroom." Clark disappeared and reappeared in two blinks with supplies that he dumped on the desk.

"We have to stop the bleeding," he said. "I need to—"

Ollie nodded his head as Clark ripped his favorite polo shirt down the front like he was shredding paper and pushed the two halves off his shoulders. Ollie grimaced but held his tongue. Clark made short work of the blood running down his chest and back from the gaping hole in his right shoulder—an injury Ollie could only hope wouldn't affect his ability to draw a bow—and secured the gauze and his arm to his side with the medical tape.

"You've done this before," Ollie said as Clark finished his ministrations.

Clark looked at him for a long moment. "I played football," he said shortly, stepping away and dropping the supplies on the desk. Not for the first time, Ollie wondered what he'd have to do to get the guy to lighten up.

"Can you get to the hospital?"

"Now that I don't have a ghost trying to kill me? Sure."

"That wasn't a ghost. It was an astral projection. Duncan's alive." Clark made his way over to Lex who was still unconscious in the middle of the floor amidst a sea of broken glass.

"Alive."

Carefully, Clark turned Lex over, checked his head, and picked him up and deposited him on the other side of the room on the sofa. "Lionel had his mother declare him dead," Clark said, "so LuthorCorp could try some experimental treatments on him. The last treatment affected his mind, allowed him to do," Clark paused, "this."

"That's…"

"Amazing, I know."

"Lex—"

"He's fine," Clark said, rejoining him. "Nothing's broken. He'll have a concussion."

Ollie added some sort of voodoo ability to diagnose illness to Clark's ever-growing repertoire of spectacular abilities, along with invulnerability, super strength and super speed.

"Did he do this?" Clark reached out, brushed a thumb over Ollie's busted lower lip. It was a remarkably...familiar gesture that made Ollie's mouth drop open. He wondered if Clark had any idea how suggestive such a gesture might seem, if they had been anyplace other than alone in his penthouse, like out with his rich friends who used sexuality as the ultimate bargaining chip, perhaps, but Clark seemed oblivious. Ollie nodded.

"Why?"

"We were arguing…" he sighed at Clark's skeptical look. "Okay, I was taunting him. About Duncan. He lost his temper."

"You guys went to school together. Can't you just try to be his friend?"

"You don't know Lex like I do. You haven't seen what he's capable of."

"I know he was different," Clark said slowly. "That was my fault. His differences made him an outsider. That was the fault of people like you. He did something…awful, but there seems to be enough guilt to go around."

"What do you mean your fault? What was your fault?"

Clark turned away without answering. "I have to go," he said, over a shoulder. He nodded in Lex's direction. "Don't tell him I was here."

"Why not?"

"Just don't."

Clark disappeared magically, much in the same way he had appeared in the first place. Ollie heard Lex groan as he pulled his phone out of his pocket to call for someone to drive him over to the hospital. He figured Lex could make his own way, if he decided on a similar destination.

Arrangements made, Ollie reviewed the amazing events of the last ten minutes in his head and frowned. He wasn't that same arrogant bully who had terrorized Lex at school. He had changed; he had dedicated his life to the common good, using his gifts and his resources to make the world a better, more equitable place.

He shouldn't care what a self-righteous farmboy six years his junior thought about anything...but he did.


End file.
